About this lesson
Secure your most important data from a disaster and backup your contacts!
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
2016, 2019.
Quick reference
Contacts Backup
Secure your most important data from a disaster and backup your contacts!
When to use
More often than necessary, we hear about smartphone synchronizing that ruins, rather than secures, your contacts file. By pre-emptively running a backup, you will be a step ahead of a potential loss of data.
Instructions to export and backup contacts
- Click the File Ribbon.
- Click Options.
- Choose Advanced.
- Locate the Export section.
- Then click Export.
- Choose Export to a File and click Next.
- Choose a file type.
- Comma Separated Values is compatible to Excel or Outlook.
- Outlook Data File (.pst) is compatible to Outlook only.
- Select the Folder to Export from your list.
- Outlook auto-names the file Backup.pst
- You should rename it to Contacts Backup.pst
- You should click BROWSE and store this file somewhere safe on your computer or on a USB removable drive.
- Click Finish.
- Tips:
- Make backup files individually for email, calendar, and contacts. Then, in case that you need to restore just contacts, you won’t overwrite months of new emails with old ones from a combined backup file.
- Name your backup files accordingly and include the date in the name, i.e.:
Email backup, 05-05-19
Calendar backup, 05-07-19
Contacts backup, 06-08-19
Instructions to import and restore contacts
- Click the File Ribbon.
- Click Options.
- Choose Advanced.
- Locate the Export section.
- Then click Export.
- Choose Import from another program or File and click Next.
- Choose a file type - pick the same type you chose when exporting.​​​​​​
- Comma Separated Values is compatible to Excel or Outlook.
- Outlook Data File (.pst) is compatible to Outlook only.
- Click Browse ... and find your file.
- Select which folder to import from (should be the only folder unless you have done many of these.)
- Click Finish.
- 00:04 All right, I want to show you how to do a contacts backup,
- 00:08 also known as exporting contacts, and then re-importing, should the time come.
- 00:14 Every once in a while, things go badly with our smartphones, right?
- 00:16 And what we do is synchronize.
- 00:18 For some freak reason,
- 00:19 our contacts vanish, either on our phone or on our computer.
- 00:23 So, the way to not panic is to have a backup ready, all right?
- 00:26 So that's what we're going to do.
- 00:27 Rest assured on the reference guide that this lesson, our step by step instructions
- 00:31 and also the exercise file for this lesson is you doing your own back up, all right?
- 00:35 So let's go ahead and do this.
- 00:37 The magic is on the file ribbon, so right up here on the top left,
- 00:40 I'm going to click on file.
- 00:41 We hit the button, we have an option that says options,
- 00:46 click this, when we go into options, notice on the left hand side,
- 00:50 we have an option that says advanced because this is absolutely advanced.
- 00:54 If you'll scroll down just a little bit, you'll see the exports section.
- 00:57 Notice the export has a back and forth arrow but over on the right, it only
- 01:01 says export, rest assured, when it's time to import, you're going to hit export.
- 01:06 I wish it said export import but it doesn't, so fine,
- 01:08 I'll hit the export because that's what I'm doing right now anyway, export.
- 01:13 Now it opens up and it defaults by highlighting import,
- 01:16 well, get your eyes up to the top, we can export rss feeds, not interested,
- 01:21 export to a file, absolutely interested.
- 01:24 Those are my only two export options and am going to take the second one.
- 01:29 Go ahead and click Next.
- 01:31 Wants to know, do you want to export to a comma separated value?
- 01:33 Well, if am bringing it into Excel or if I'm uploading my contact list to some user
- 01:39 platform, some website platform, they usually want a CSV separated file.
- 01:45 In this case, no, I want the outlook data file, which is oddly called a .PST.
- 01:50 I don't even know what that stands for.
- 01:52 It doesn't really matter.
- 01:53 It says outlook data file.
- 01:55 That is the export I want to use.
- 01:57 Because when I bring it back in, I want it to go readily and nicely into Outlook.
- 02:02 Hit Next.
- 02:03 Now, choose which file.
- 02:05 I can back up my inbox, I can back up my calendar, I can back up my contacts.
- 02:10 Notice down below, it says include sub folders, if I open up this arrow,
- 02:14 you can see my sub folders.
- 02:15 Yes, I want to include everything in this.
- 02:18 Maybe I can hit filter, I want to filter down to just export certain zip codes, or
- 02:22 certain state names or city names.
- 02:23 I could do that, I don't want to but I could.
- 02:26 Click Next.
- 02:28 And now, this is the fist time you see the word backup.
- 02:31 It's a default file name.
- 02:32 I'm going to leave it at that but
- 02:34 I'm certainly going to control where I land this thing.
- 02:36 So I'm going to hit Browse, and I want this to land maybe out on my desktop.
- 02:41 So, I will hit my Desktop, I'll leave it named backup, I'll hit OK, here we go.
- 02:47 I'm going to go ahead and hit the Finish button.
- 02:49 When I click Finish, it wants me to password protect this.
- 02:54 For this example, I'm not going to waste time doing that.
- 02:56 It's just an example.
- 02:58 Generally, absolutely.
- 02:59 I'm going to password protect my contacts.
- 03:01 I don't want anyone to hack me and get my contact list.
- 03:04 Anyway, at this point, I'm going to go ahead and hit OK.
- 03:06 No password is entered, so I won't need one to re import, hit OK.
- 03:09 It happens so fast.
- 03:10 If I had hundreds, you would see little pieces of paper flying across my screen.
- 03:14 That is not the case.
- 03:16 All right, let's see if this work.
- 03:18 I'm going to literary Ctrl+A on my contacts and delete.
- 03:22 I just deleted my contacts.
- 03:24 Let's just say synchronize happened.
- 03:26 I open this, no contacts.
- 03:27 Panic or remember, wait a minute.
- 03:30 Didn't I back up those things up?
- 03:31 Let's reverse this process.
- 03:32 Click on File.
- 03:34 Click on Actions.
- 03:35 Click on Advanced.
- 03:37 Click on Export, even though I want to import, I'm going to click on export and
- 03:41 look it, import from another program, from an OPML,
- 03:46 from an RSS feed or from, let's see.
- 03:50 I want it to say a .PST file but it doesn't show me.
- 03:53 So I'll just say from another program or file, that's fine.
- 03:56 Hit Next, there's what I'm looking for, PST.
- 04:01 Now, that will match a file type of the one I saved.
- 04:04 Hit Next.
- 04:05 It wants to find this for me, so I'm going to browse for it.
- 04:08 I know I dropped it on my desktop, there it is,
- 04:11 backup.pst, love that name backup, hit Open.
- 04:15 Hit Next.
- 04:17 It's going to drop in my outlook data file.
- 04:20 Include sub folders, hit Finish.
- 04:23 And go back and check my contacts and magically, there they all are.
- 04:28 I love this process.
- 04:29 Please do a backup on all your files.
- 04:32 Please, please, please, thank you.
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